Darwin to Jesus
@darwintojesus • 77,315 subscribers
Lifelong atheist who found Jesus Christ. Husband and father. Exposing the lies and fallacies of Atheism, proclaiming the truth of Christianity.
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A Christian friend of mine called me last night to talk about the problem of animal suffering because of Alex O'Connor’s debate with William Lane Craig. He was concerned because he thinks that Alex made a good argument. Before I give my thoughts let’s get one thing straight: This is not a logical argument, it’s an emotional argument. The atheist always taps into our emotions to when they talk about this. We’re asked to think of things like a Zebra getting his windpipe crushed by a lion so that as we deal with the argument we’re feeling, rather than thinking. So before I give a few brief remarks, let’s all turn our brains back on and the feelings off (if you can) and actually consider this rationally. 1. Alex and many other atheists bring up suffering as if it adds onto itself, so here’s one instance of suffering and that’s one, and here’s another instance in another animal so that’s two, three, etc… but why? Why are we adding up individual creature suffering and putting it all into the same bin of “suffering?” Every individual experiences its own local suffering, that’s it. There’s no aggregate. There’s no “pool of suffering.” The move to stack one animal’s suffering on top of another animal is silly. I don’t see any justification for it. 2. Suffering just means not getting what you want, that’s it, and it’s temporary. Yesterday at the pool my daughter stubbed her toe. She said “ow!” She hopped around, and then she forgot all about it and went back to playing. It wasn’t a big deal. Atheists act like suffering is just the end of the world and frankly it’s childish. We all suffer, we all don’t get what we want, so what? Why is God obligated to give us what we want all the time? He isn’t. Not only that but suffering can make people better, it helps you appreciate things, learn lessons, etc. There’s nothing about suffering that indicates it’s some kind of evil thing that God must stop and shouldn’t be allowing. To really make my point imagine a world without suffering and then someone gets a tummy ache. He’s now suffering. Should we now think God doesn’t exist because one man got an ache in his tum tum? I think not. What about two aches, in two tum tums? See where I’m going? There’s nothing incompatible with God and suffering. This is just emotional manipulation. 3. Suffering has a lot to do with frame of reference. If you turned a human into an ant, they’d probably suffer a lot, but that’s because they know what it is to not be an ant. Compared to a human, ants live very difficult lives. But does the ant know that? No, an ant is just an ant. That’s all it knows. It has no frame of reference and what we might find horrible, an ant finds mundane and normal. In other words, it’s entirely possible that animals don’t suffer nearly as much as we think they do, and the only reason we think they suffer is because we’re projecting ourselves onto them. If WE were them, we wouldn’t like it. But that doesn’t necessarily follow, I would hate to be a fly eating poop all day, but does a fly suffer when they eat poop? No, they love it. The other day I saw a video of a woman with no arms, just legs. She could do everything—drive, get dressed, etc. When we see a woman without arms we imagine they’re suffering because we love our arms, but she’s never had them. So is she suffering? Or is this just all she knows? So it’s not obvious that animals suffer anywhere near as much as we imagine they do. 4. Lastly, according to what worldview is suffering “bad?” When the atheist points at suffering as an evil/bad thing, are they doing that from their atheism, or from our worldview as Christians? Does the atheist need to borrow from our worldview to even make sense of the idea that there’s something wrong with suffering? Or are they able to conjure this metaphysical idea of “badness” up on atheism as well? This really needs to be pushed on. I don’t think for one second that atheism can account for something like “badness,” so the very thing they want to complain about is totally fine according to their own worldview. If that’s the case, which worldview is less likely to be true… the Christian worldview where we have sin and badness, or the atheist worldview where things just happen, events… and the moral dimension is nothing but a programmed illusion? I think it goes without saying that the atheist worldview is far less likely to be true if that’s the case, and if it isn’t, the atheist has a lot of work to do in explaining how their absurd worldview can make sense of why wrongness exists. We need to stop granting atheists access to metaphysics that make absolutely no sense on their own worldview.
Darwin to Jesus12,288 次观看 • 5 天前
Interesting argument. If we were to steel man this and represent it as a syllogism I think it would look like this: 1. God is perfect 2. A perfect being would only create perfect things 3. The world is imperfect 4. Therefore, a perfect God could not have created this world ...And then we'd further conclude a perfect God doesn't exist. The problem is with premise two, for a number of reasons. Firstly, what does it mean to be perfect? To be perfect is to lack for nothing, to be without flaws, to be fully actualized. But only God is like that, so the only way for God to make something perfect would be to make another God exactly like Himself. But there's a problem with this because the second God couldn't be exactly the same since he had to be created, rather than simply existing by his very nature. So logically speaking God can't create something perfect. This means that if* God creates, God can only create things that are imperfect. So now that we've established that God can't make something perfect, I guess the question is... why would God create? Here's a thought. Ontologically speaking God is the greatest conceivable being... would the greatest conceivable being create things? Or not create things? It seems obvious that creating is greater than not creating. An artist that creates no art wouldn't be much of an artist. If this is correct, it means God will create, and from my first argument God will create something imperfect... something flawed. Something lacking. Another thing worth pointing out is that as humans we knowingly create imperfect beings. We know when a baby is born, it's not perfect... yet we choose to do it anyway. Why? Is our desire to bring new life into the world something evil or wicked? I don't think so. I think it comes from our love for each other and our understanding that giving life is a blessing, even if that child screws up, even if they suffer, their life is a blessing. If God is good, wouldn't He want to bless something with the gift of life, the same way we do? I don't see why not. From this I think it follows that if God exists we'd expect to be in some sort of imperfect or flawed reality, and that's exactly what we find ourselves in. But how does atheism explain the existence of a flawed world? To say that something is flawed is to say it's not how it should be. But how can the world be flawed if atheism is true? On atheism the world just... is. It's not meant to be any sort of way. To be consistent the atheist would have to say reality isn't flawed, which is obviously absurd. This means that not only can Christianity explain the world we find ourselves in, it predicts it logically. Atheism on the other hand would have to predict a totally neutral world with no flaws, no issues, no evil... and no one in their right mind would say that's the world we find ourselves in. So this argument not only fails, it gives us more great reasons to reject atheism.
Darwin to Jesus57,323 次观看 • 1 个月前
One tiny cell of your DNA stores 3 billion letters of code, that’s enough information to fill about a thousand books. DNA is stored so compactly and efficiently that if we unraveled all the DNA in your body it would stretch to Pluto and back. When a cell divides and the DNA is copied, there are almost zero mistakes… only 1 per billion* digits. That’s like copying the entire encyclopedia Britannica hundreds of times without a single mistake. I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist. Do you?
Darwin to Jesus128,990 次观看 • 4 个月前
What's really ironic about this argument is that it actually works against atheism. You have an ape-like creature, it has a baby... but now this* baby is a "human" with real value and human dignity? That makes no sense. Why do humans have any more value or worth than a fish, a spider, or a rock? The answer is we don't. This is the truth on atheism, and this is why atheist regimes didn't hesitate to murder anyone that got in their way, the same way we indifferently poison ants that annoy us. What's the difference? Let me put it this way. If you believe humans have actual value, and that there's a real and meaningful moral difference between stepping on an ant vs stepping on a baby, you should categorically reject atheism.
Darwin to Jesus29,977 次观看 • 1 个月前
